The four bishops in the Diocese of Southwark meet once each month from 8am till 2pm. During this meeting one of us leads a Bible Study and this morning was my turn. Without going into detail, several intriguing questions emerged.
I picked up on the call by the Apostle Paul to the Ephesians (2:11) to ‘remember’ their story and how they (Jews and non-Jews) had moved from being ‘aliens and strangers’ into being members of the same ‘family’. This injunction to ‘remember’ their story recalled the warnings given to the people of Israel before they entered the Promised Land way back in the Old Testament.
In Deuteronomy 26 (for example) they were told that when things began to go well for them they would soon forget their own history and begin to behave badly: if they took their gains for granted (and not as ‘gift’) they would forget that they had once been slaves and homeless wanderers – and would begin to treat other people as slaves, etc.
In order to try to avoid this sort of amnesia, the people would instigate an annual festival – a ritual aimed at reminding them of their origins and that their ‘blessing’ was to be regarded as ‘gift’ for the benefit of all in the community. One of these festivals involved the first crops of the harvest being brought to the priest and the recitation of a creed (the oldest form of creed in the Hebrew Bible). It begins with a blunt articulation of the reminder that ‘my ancestor was a wandering Aramaean…’. The active verbs are all attributed to God in the story of how the people were liberated from slavery, etc. So what?
The ritual re-telling of the story was intended to prevent the people ever forgetting their story. The Christian equivalent is the Eucharist (or Holy Communion). This is where we re-member our story of God’s generosity and re-commit ourselves to live generously as his people in the world. But how is this story to be told when people clearly do not learn the Christian ‘story’ by what I rudely call ‘liturgical osmosis’? Just hearing disconnected readings in a service (followed by a sermon which doesn’t always paint the big canvas onto which the particular detail of ‘today’s’ sermon fits) does not help people learn the content of the Christian faith, learn to handle the Bible or grow in confidence in having a ‘reason for the faith that is within’ them.
What worries me about this is the fact that many churches do not have Bibles in the pews. The Bible readings are often printed in a service sheet. In an increasing number of churches, everything is projected onto screens using PowerPoint. The net result is the same: the excerpts are disconnected and decontextualised. It is possible for a generation of Christians to grow up never handling a Bible or knowing how to read it as a book (or books). And this must have an impact on biblical literacy and confidence.
It seems to me (especially from how this matter is addressed when I do Parish Visits) that people need to grow in confidence in an intelligent handling of the Bible, an increasing familiarisation with its narratives and teachings and an openness to having character shaped by a regular reading of the Bible – alone and in the company of others. This means churches having Bibles available and encouraging people to use them during services. The Bible is not easy and needs some opening up if such confidence is to grow.
It is perhaps not surprising that some Christians feel diffident in using or defending the Bible in the face of an aggressive atheism/secularism or a confident Islam. A simplistic recourse to the sort of fundamentalism that cannot be questioned is hopeless in engaging with the wider world.
So, without in any way wanting to encourage a luddite approach to creativity, I do worry a bit about service sheets and screens and their effect on our corporate ‘remembering’ of our story. I am sure I am not alone.
June 18, 2009 at 8:13 am
Couldn’t agree more +Nick. The whole issue was summed up for me when our new incumbent arrived a couple of years ago and took a proposal to the PCC that we invest in pew Bibles. To quote one contribution to the debate ‘Not another book in church, we’ve got enough of those already.’
As someone whose job is to provide education and training programmes for a diocese I am increasingly concerned about the lack of basic knowledge of the Bible and its core narratives. In eight years in post I have found we have had to move further back in our starting point as we can no longer make assumptions about knowledge that used to be 1.1 Sunday School material. I am astonished at the ignorance of the scriptures of some of those offering for lay and ordained ministry who have no regular disciplined engagement with the Bible. The assumption seems to be that they will learn this while training!
I can’t help feeling we were ill served by the ASB thematic approach to the Bible, which gave us snippets from around the Bible unrelated to the contexts, and the Common Worship lectionary has at least moved us back to a more regular pattern of engagement.
One of the good things to come out of Andrew Motion’s comments about the place of the Bible and the study of literature back in February was to raise this issue. It is ironic that it was the secular academic world that raised this problem. Had a bit of a rant about it at the time http://tiny.cc/hPD15 .
Thanks for raising this crucial issue.
June 18, 2009 at 1:30 pm
It seems to me that the Bible is a victim of its own success, so many translations. I have friends who consider the KJV to be the one and only, my daughters both prefer the Good News while I have a fondness for the NIV. Whilst one could say the message is the same regardless of the idiom, I suspect that a child of 12 or younger would find some difficulty in comprehending the language of say the KJV, whilst a person used to its lyrical prose would feel a little cheated by other more simplistic translations. In an attempt to please everyone, I dare say the sidesperson(s) would have to become familiar with the Dewey Decimal system!
I’d be quite tempted to cross-reference and note all the threads in the lectionary onto the service sheet in order that the congregation could look into the whole story later, should they be interested.
June 18, 2009 at 2:12 pm
It gets worse. One church I attend (CofE but not in your jurisdiction) doesn’t have bibles in pews or print or screen the readings. At the monthly Amateur Talent Contest (I think the official name for these things is All-age Service) the gospel is frequently mumbled by a semi-literate primary school child. Apparently some bloke in a long white robe said something about “Suffer the little children,” and he meant, “humiliate them by putting them on centre stage without rehearsing them adequately”.
June 18, 2009 at 2:24 pm
Well said!
However, what about the visitors to our churches?
The reason we use PPT is because we want visitors not to have to fumble through piles of books and find page numbers, especially as we have a number who have very limited reading ability.
For the Christians I have a Thursday morning Bible Study group in which we have just finished Ecclesiates and we are now thinking about Paul’s understanding of God from his letters (yes, beginning with Ephesians!) and we have half a dozon other home groups … so we do have a pile of Bibles in church that don’t get used, but as the sermons work through Bible books, does not handling the actual book matter?
June 18, 2009 at 3:24 pm
Nick, a timely reflection on the Bible not being accessible. I must admit that I had done little Bible before returning to the CofE last year – now, it is part of daily life. A little each day, to learn and pray for and reflect on. Perhaps my Vicar is different, he always puts the Bible into perspective for us when dwelling on it in his sermon. The bigger picture!
Still so much to read and comprehend, just got some Tom Wright books on the interpretation of in particular the Gospels. Really accessible and helpful.
June 18, 2009 at 7:24 pm
We’re heavilly into Powerpoint but we took a decision a few years ago not to put the Bible readings on the screen, precisely so people would actually pick up the book from the pew.
It reminds me of the story told when I was student on placement of the woman who told the curate how much she enjoyed the readings (of the Bible) that were printed in the pewsheet and enquired if anyone had thought of collecting them into a book.
Can I also recommend ‘Pure Gold’ by SEAN (see http://www.sean.uk.net) a brilliant but simple ten week overview of the Bible that all our new Christians are now doing with great profit.
June 19, 2009 at 7:42 am
Isn’t this really about encouraging people on a journey of discipleship?
I don’t think engaging with the Bible once a week during a church service is ever going to yield the sort of knowledge we need as Christians to engage theologically with the world, however good the preaching is.
The constant emphasis on increasing numbers as a measure of effectiveness means that in many churches you are left pretty much to discover your own pathway once you’ve made a commitment.
I don’t know a single church which doesn’t interpret ‘go make disciples’ as ‘go make new church members.’
And books are off putting to people who aren’t familiar with using books. Most comments on this thread do imply that Christianity is and should be the province of the highly literate.
As an adult new Christian I saw someone using a study Bible and immediately went out and bought one myself. There are loads of Bibles with good notes around to suit everyone. But if you are reading the Bible on your own without any help it is very hard to understand and apply.
June 19, 2009 at 7:47 am
The problem is that, in my experience, people do not even handle a Bible unless encouraged to do so in church. Most new Christians are not as confidently self-motivated as you seem to have been. And I saw a study Bible recently that scared me – very loaded!
I’ll be interested to see how we get round this one when, like it or not, the Bible is literature and needs literacy.
June 19, 2009 at 8:15 am
Well something I was quite surprised to realise at theological college – because I’d just never thought about it before – was that of course Jesus wasn’t going round with an NIV under his arm!
And of course the knowledge and teaching that we access through the Bible wasn’t generally available until very recently, yet somehow the faith survived. Maybe we should go back and look at how.
When I worked with young offenders, whose literacy level was of course very low, what they engaged with was stories and images – which is pretty much how Jesus taught at lot of the time, so there are plenty to draw on.
In a way I think my reaction to the Bible could have been an early indication of my vocation to preaching and eventually to ordination, so it probably isn’t typical. However, as a preacher I find that the more I let people into the process of wrestling with a particular passage, the more they engage with it, and will often say things like ‘I’ve always wondered that!’ or (my favourite comment after a sermon) ‘I shall go home and think about that!’
So it’s my experience that people do want to engage with the Bible, but what stops them isn’t a lack of pew Bibles but the idea that the Bible as a specialised text that only the highly qualified are allowed to engage with and comment on.
I suppose that’s what’s at the root of my objection to making Bible study seem more elitist. People who have not done well at school are very intimidated by books – however they are quite capable of engaging with Biblical material.
June 19, 2009 at 8:24 am
But this isn’t about ‘elitism’ – it’s about accessibility. And Jesus DID go round with the Hebrew Scriptures either on the scrolls or memorised. I think that’s the point.
June 19, 2009 at 8:48 am
“it’s about accessibility”
Exactly.
I’m just questioning whether putting Bibles out in book form = job done.
Jesus may have gone round with scrolls under his arm – though I somehow doubt it – but my point is that he didn’t hand them out and tell everyone to follow them, or require a certain amount of scroll knowledge in his listeners. The knowledge of scripture was there but he put it in ways that his listeners could engage with.
You are asking a very important question, and it’s one that needs an answer – how do we increase people’s knowledge of the faith. I just don’t agree the complete answer.
You also say
“people need to grow in confidence in an intelligent handling of the Bible, an increasing familiarisation with its narratives and teachings and an openness to having character shaped by a regular reading of the Bible – alone and in the company of others.”
I don’t have an arguement with that either!
However, I think there’s a bit of a ‘with one bound he was free’ flavour to your conclusion
“This means churches having Bibles available and encouraging people to use them during services. The Bible is not easy and needs some opening up if such confidence is to grow.”
I really don’t think that opening Bibles in services is complete answer to the very important questions you’ve posed, for the very reason you state – the Bible is not easy and needs some opening up.
When Jesus opened up the Scriptures to his disciples I have always understood that to mean teaching, insight, and modelling a way of thinking about scripture which enables us to hear what God is telling us through that. If pew Bibles help in that process, great.
However in all the churches I’ve been in where Bibles have been used during services, this basically consists of the preacher citing the passage, then a lot of rustling while it’s found, then the preacher telling us what it means.
OK it does place the passage in the context of the whole book, but in terms of ‘opening up’ the Bible I don’t think this really goes a lot further than printing the passage for people to read on the leaflet.
We had a prayer group for at our home for several years where we read the passages for Sunday, prayed through them and discussed them. I could see that sort of thing working for people who wanted to do it, but you would have to Bible study a priority.
If the question is ‘why isn’t Bible study a priority?’, maybe one reason is that you can be fairly high up in the church hierarchy as a non-minister without needing to open a Bible at all! How many churchwardens or PCC members or even Junior Church leaders have to demonstrate a working knowledge of their faith before they are appointed?
June 19, 2009 at 10:12 am
I didn’t say that putting Bibles in pews = ‘job done’. And I am not for one moment suggesting that there is a one-size-fits-all solution to the problem I was wondering about. Of course, we have to find creative ways to make the Bible accessible, tell its stories, preach it, teach it and live it – and that requires creativity in widely differing contexts for a wide range of different people with different needs and abilities. Yes, we need story-tellers and AV presentations. Yes, we need imaginative ways of enabling people to learn what the content of the Bible is all about. None of that is in doubt. But I have simply identified one point at which the Bible is not handled as the book of books it actually is and fear that not encouraging people to handle it appropriately might have consequences we do not anticipate.
On the matter of ‘elitism’ (again), this does beg the question why Muslims of all sorts of literacy ability seem able to read and learn the Quran (in a foreign language), whereas we say this is simply too hard for us with the Bible. (On a similar matter, I cannot for the life of me work out why Brits are so incompetent when it comes to learning/reading/writing/speaking foreign languages when immigrants frequently switch between several languages with seeming ease.) Is there not also a danger that we impose limitations on people that say more about us and our prejudices than they do about those for whom we pretend to speak?
June 19, 2009 at 10:32 am
“Of course, we have to find creative ways to make the Bible accessible, tell its stories, preach it, teach it and live it – and that requires creativity in widely differing contexts for a wide range of different people with different needs and abilities. Yes, we need story-tellers and AV presentations. Yes, we need imaginative ways of enabling people to learn what the content of the Bible is all about. None of that is in doubt.”
Well we are clearly in basic agreement then – I just don’t see the artefact – ‘book’ – as being able *in itself* to imbue a knowledge of and love of The Word.
I am certainly not AGAINST having Bibles available in church, but I don’t think their presence alone will make one jot of difference in a church where knowledge of the faith is not valued.
I don’t know if every Muslim I’ve met is functionally literate enough in Arabic to read the Quran, but since there was a ‘sort of translation’ in circulation via the Chaplaincy when I worked with an Imam in prison (‘sort of’ because it is not, as far as I know, possible to translate the Quran) I don’t think so.
I don’t know enough about Islam to make blanket statements about universal practices, but from what I saw the interpretation was down to the local Imam. I’m not sure how much ‘study’ went on in the sense that I would understand Bible study, it seemed to be more ‘telling.’
But of course I was working in a prison setting so not typical.
June 19, 2009 at 10:37 am
Oh an incidentally I would not ‘claim to speak’ for others. I do have quite a lot of experience of working with people who can’t read though – and believe me, anywhere where you have to read a book in order to belong is a complete non-starter.
In fact a really interesting question was raised at the Pioneer ministry conference I attended at Easter by someone working with gypsies, whose indigenous culture, as far as I can gather, in not literate. How do you train leaders from a non-literate culture and how do you teach the faith?
I know that’s a tangent but maybe it gives a flavour of where I’m coming from!
Maybe if reading is intrinsic to faith we should revisit the church’s engagement with education to extend beyond schools to those who are disengaged from the educational system?
June 19, 2009 at 10:45 am
Yes, but…
1. Most of the population is literate and they do need an appropriate approach too.
2. What I have been asking is not primarily about ‘belonging’. I am certainly not linking literacy to belonging.
3. I am regularly involved in prisons, ‘special schools’, with imams/Muslims, etc and do know something about these matters from experience (as you do). But it is problematic to identify the minorities and then extrapolate from their experience to that of the majority. In other words, ‘illiterates’ need different approaches from ‘literates’; but the fact that ‘illiterates’ require other methods does not mean that everybody else has to be faced with the same approach. I thought i had made that clear in my earlier response.
June 19, 2009 at 11:03 am
Well to be honest I did read the blog and the first few comments as coming across as rather ‘why oh why?’ and there is something inside me that always wants to question an apparent consensus that ‘we’ are right and everyone else is wrong – I do accept I’m just working on my impressions here though, so apologies if I’ve been a bit harsh.
In terms of the wider, literate society – seriously I feel the fact that you can wield considerable power in church terms without anyone looking at your faith is a possible reason. You don’t have to be biblically literate to be a church warden and yet you may end up making decisions on mission, appointments etc. And I have – and this is not any kind of exaggeration – served on a PCC with someone who told me he was an atheist!
June 19, 2009 at 11:06 am
I understand that. But, churchwardens do not make decisions – the PCC does. (And, of course, it is ridiculous to have a churchwarden who is an atheist…)
June 19, 2009 at 11:13 am
I’m extremely thankful that when I first attended church 15 years ago the current vicar said “You need to read the Bible Anne”. He suggested using bible reading notes and gave me his copy of Every Day with Jesus.
I have been using such notes to help me read the bible every day (more or less) since, but without that vicar’s helpful suggestion I would have had no idea where to start! Also by using the notes I have been taken to parts of the bible I would have been unlikely to read left to my own devices.
Anne.
June 19, 2009 at 11:51 am
You could put bibles in pews and suggest that people use them if they find them helpful, making it easy for people with no reading confidence to pass without explaining themselves.
The church I mentioned earlier created a course of six evening discussions called “How to start reading the bible.” This had a mixture of talking to people, giving them handouts with plenty of charts and maps and pictures, looking at selected readings and reading them aloud, and discussion of anything that came up. It managed fairly well with a wide range of reading abilities and length of exposure to churchy things. We created this because people who had been in church for years said they had no idea where to start with the bible, and others had attempted to read an AV starting at Genesis and got stuck. The idea is that this will be offered every year or so along with more traditional “read one book of the bible for four/six sessions” studies.
As for the Brits and foreign languages, my theory as a kid was that They thought that if languages were taught properly we’d all leave for climes where “food” didn’t consist of suet and cabbage boiled for 45 mins and “entertainment” didn’t mean drinking ten pints and attacking one another with broken bottles.
June 19, 2009 at 3:27 pm
I have to say that this is a lively discussion. I think that literacy is a key skill, those who don’t have it, are at a disadvantage. So I am all for ways of helping them to understand. Pam is describing her experience and ways of reaching those who have not had our advantages.
I left school in the 1960′s, with no formal educational qualifications. So, anything I have has come through life experience, through my employers engaging and developing my communication and numeracy skills.
They must have done a reasonable job, as I now hold a relatively senior middle management position with a whole range of responsibilities ranging from HR through Finance, Investment Management, Audit and even Education and Training. I am responsible for 24 people and support over 440 others. I believe in every one of them being given the same chances that I have and to make the most of them.
So I come from that position – being new to the Bible and Christianity within the CofE, means that I need to learn and understand so much – the Bible is central to all Christian Learning, of course, an additional spur is the call that I feel to serve in some way in Ministry – I have a mountain to climb and overcome to prepare for that, if I am found to be suitable.
But please keep talking about the topic, the more we are open to discussion, the more we learn.
June 19, 2009 at 4:48 pm
Interesting to hear Pam’s perspective. I work with a team in a prison chapel on a monthly basis, and we always ensure that there are bibles for each chair (about 20-25 come). Of course, they might not know where 1 John is (like most Christians, possibly), so we use the time-honoured system of “at the top left of page 1109″ or whatever. This (a) gets them to see that the bible is a big book and needs care and attention and time (they have plenty of this, by and large) but (b) that it tells a big story, with or without visual aids and pictures! We have a high take up rate of prisoners asking to have their own bibles for use in the cells. Contrast that with our own “charismatic evangelical” church which uses PPT for the single scripture passage that Sunday. You traditional Anglicans, count yourself lucky. At least you can access an OT reading, a gospel, an epistle and a chanted psalm each Sunday, as well as having the story of the eucharist “painted” for you regularly.
I agree with Nick, biblical literacy is a huge issue for Christians, and also with Pam’s earlier comment on discipleship, which indicates that we must not merely be hearers of the thing but doers too. We need to find ways of soaking our congregations in, say, the gospels, as this not only directs our path in discipleship, but is a vehicle for the Holy Spirit to deepen our worship and love for Jesus.
This is a good discussion, conducted in words! Pictures, anyone?
June 19, 2009 at 7:19 pm
We gave away loads of Bibles in the young offenders’ institute, and also plastic ‘rosemary beads’ which were regarded as something of a fashion item – especially the glow in the dark ones!
And the YOI Bible study groups were some of the most stimulating I’ve been in. I ran a session on the Kingdom when I was doing Reader training and the way group members related it to their own situation was amazing. We did read the passage from Bibles, it sometimes took a long time but there were always enough volunteers to read it.
(Even more amazing was the young man who said that he blamed God for the state the world was in because if he didn’t go round forgiving people they would be too scared to do bad things!)
The thing I love about the communion service is that it’s ‘full of quotations’ – there’s a lot of Biblical material in there and I think it did get into my system when I started going to church in a ‘lectio divina’ kind of way.
But I think systematic Bible study, to acquire in-depth knowledge, would have to be purposeful wouldn’t it, in the way that Anne’s vicar suggested, or via a study group, rather than just gleaned from services?
June 20, 2009 at 12:31 am
Surely the message is more important than the paper it is written on!
I think you will find that there are those who haven’t the time and/or ability to study, so those members of their Christian community that can/do help by sharing their knowledge in given situations.
In a similar way some are more in tune with praying, others still live a life of service to their Christian community.
Perhaps you all need to have a little more faith in God. If a person needs to have more engagement with the Bible (and lets let God be the judge of that eh?!) then that is something that they will be drawn to.
We aren’t all individuals on our own little missions we are ‘one body’ and different parts of the body perform diffeent functions and occupy different areas.
Although if Nick is offering diocese funds to buy 100 pew Bibles for St George’s in Shilrey I’m sure we will gladly accept!
Gareth.
June 21, 2009 at 2:44 pm
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